Get the Gringo

Review by Anthony Morris

For a man that these days is pretty much universally hated for all manner of pretty good reasons, Mel Gibson usually manages to do pretty good work in front of the camera. 

He's given bad performances and made bad films but he's always seemed like someone more than capable of turning it around – you never get the feeling he's just phoning it in, even when he might have been better off doing so. 

So with Get the Gringo, which seems like the kind of direct-to-DVD action thriller that video store shelves are packed with (Australia's one of the few countries where it’s getting a cinema release), what you actually get is a tight thriller that, while never being outright surprising, does consistently manage to keep you wanting to know what’s going to happen next. 

Things kick off with Gibson in a clown costume driving a getaway car after a robbery gone wrong. 

His fellow crime clown is bleeding to death over the money, the cops are on his tail, and between him and Mexico is one seriously big fence. He manages to get across the fence but that’s where his getaway ends, and the corrupt Mexican cops he collapses in front of decide to haul him off to jail on their side of the border so they can hang onto the money he has with him. 

Thrown into a prison so big it has shops and businesses inside it – not to mention entire families, as prisoners can bring their wives and kids in with them if they’re willing to pay – he promptly begins scheming, first how to get money and a place to live, then how to get out. And if that involves taking on and taking down the criminals in charge of the whole place, so be it. 

Gibson’s nameless character is your usual Gibson criminal – stealing from blind people, burning down a drug dealer’s shack, gunning down rivals, and so on – and his mix of charm and viciousness works as well as it ever did. 

Even a potentially schmaltzy subplot where he befriends a kid isn’t painful, thanks to the kid (for once) not being annoying and Gibson being so skilled at scheming that helping someone else out don’t seem like too much of a stretch. 

The prison itself is astoundingly scuzzy (it was filmed on location), which only adds to the film’s impact. 

4 out of 5

Get the Gringo
Australian release: 31st May, 2012
Official Site: Get the Gringo
Cast: Mel Gibson, Peter Stormare, Dean Norris, Bob Gunton, Kevin Hernandez
Director: Adrian Grunberg